Muzzle of Bees
by lemonjelly
Summary: Britta says, "I want to make you a mix CD." Because she can already hear most of it in her head. Annie/Britta


**A/N:** I wrote this quickly and I'm not the biggest fan. However, I want there to be more Annie/Britta, so here's me trying to provoke a response from a pretty reticent fanbase, and I guess as a gift to the shippers on Tumblr. I feel like enjoyment of this will lean heavily on a knowledge of the music – but I tried to pick things that'd be in character for Britta.

–

**Muzzle of Bees**

–

It had started sooner than Annie could have guessed; it actually started two months after they first met.

It starts like this: a hesitant, enquiring text from Annie at 9am on a Saturday, half-expecting Britta to never reply. A nervous silence between 9am and 11.45am – Annie brushes her hair, cleans her entire apartment, and considers all the ways in which Britta was too busy to reply, too grown-up to want to see her at the weekend, too alternative to want to go to the mall. A message from Britta at 11.45am reading: _Oh shit, I'm sorry – I totally slept way too late, and my phone died, and I'm sorry. You still up for it? I can pick you up in half an hour or something?_

It starts when Britta pulls up outside Annie's building at half twelve and Grandaddy's _A.M 180 _comes on her driving mix CD. Britta taps her fingers on the steering wheel and calls Annie on her cell to tell her she's here, and she sits back in the driver's seat, and she sees Annie's face appear in her second-floor window to the sound of cheery late-90s synth. And a smile crosses Britta's lips.

When Annie comes downstairs and steps out onto the sidewalk, crossing the street to Britta's car, Jason Lytle is singing, _We'll defuse bombs, walk marathons, take on whatever together. _Annie looks like some kind of pure embodiment of sunshine and freedom and innocence, Britta thinks, and hastily combs her fingers through her hair, wishing she hadn't just rushed blindly out of her apartment this morning.

But Britta feels good this morning, even if she could've picked a more recently-washed shirt to wear, and somehow the sight of Annie walking towards her with an excited grin on her face sends some kind of buzz of warmth or joy or something through her.

It starts then – Britta starts mentally squirrelling away songs she might one day put on a mix CD for Annie.

"Who is this?" Annie asks, sliding into the passenger seat.

"Grandaddy," Britta says. She's wearing her usual leather jacket, with sunglasses on, and she starts up the car engine as she answers.

"Oh." Annie says, and nods in pretend understanding, thinking of all the ways Britta was too cool to be going to the mall with her on a Saturday afternoon. She shuffles in her seat, trying to think of a next thing to say as they pull away from the curb. Then Britta glances over at Annie and sees her expression of uncertain eagerness, feels that strange buzz run through her again. She flicks the song back to the start for Annie.

"They were this band back in the late 90s, early 2000s," she says. "You'll like this one. It's happy."

_And I want to find you when something good happens._

_–_

A year from then, Annie and Britta have turned weekend mall trips into something of an inconsistent tradition. In that year, Annie discovers that Britta is definitely less cool and nonchalant than she'd first thought, and Britta discovers that Annie is definitely less innocent and naïve than she'd expected.

One evening when dropping Annie off outside her apartment after dark, a shady-looking man emerging from Dildopolis cat-calls Annie, shouts something indistinct but probably lewd. And before Britta can leap out of her car and right-hook the dude, she sees Annie turn to him with a glint of pure outrage and fury in her eyes, screaming a torrent of cursewords that stuns Britta.

The man scuttles away, and Annie – cool as anything – just glances back at Britta, maybe rolls her eyes as though it's nothing at all, and waves goodnight.

Britta blinks – she smiles – a buzz of warmth runs through her and she thinks, _a Pixies song, perhaps_, hearing the slick bassline of _Hey _in her head.

_Hey – where have you been?_

Another evening, one year from then, they are lying together on the couch at Annie's new place. Troy and Abed are playing video games, lost to the world, and Annie and Britta are just idly watching, talking about nothing. When Annie shifts onto her elbows, edging away from the edge of the sofa and closer into Britta, her blouse dips a little more and Britta finds her gaze following the smooth-skinned curve of Annie's chest down from her neck, before jolting in realisation and looking guiltily up at Annie.

And Annie has this expression on her face – one of mischievous curiosity, of a small thought growing – and a buzz runs through them both. A blush rises on Britta's face.

"Annie…" she says, not sure where she's heading with it, because all words have left her head, and she cannot think past the rise and fall of Annie's chest, the warmth of Annie's body against hers. But a sudden whoop from Troy cuts the tension, and he's on his feet flaunting some video game victory in Abed's indifferent face, and Annie flashes a smile at Britta.

"Can we watch a movie now?" she says to the room.

Britta can't quite remember what movie they watched, but later, the thought of being spooned up on that couch with Annie's body perfectly fitted to hers will be accompanied by some soft track by The Beta Band_._

_If there's something inside that you want to say,  
__Say it out loud – it'll be okay._

So, on some nondescript weekend mall trip, Annie is watching Britta rifle through LPs at that grubby, cluttered record store populated almost entirely by half-awake thirty-something men in band t-shirts.

And Annie says, "You listen to a lot of angry music, don't you, Britta?"  
Or maybe she says, "Does anybody even own a record player anymore?"

Either way, Britta looks up at her, surprised. "Why do you say that?"

And Annie shrugs, saying – "I guess I just don't know anybody else who listens to music like you do."

So Britta says, "I want to make you a mix CD." Because she can already hear most of it in her head, and because Annie didn't say it with disdain, or with scorn, but with intrigue – a genuine desire to know her better. It kind of tugs at something in Britta, though she doesn't quite know what.

Annie almost visibly melts. A beam spreads on her face – "I'd like that!" And Britta whole-heartedly believes her, and the thought of that makes Britta feel such a sudden surge of affection that it embarrasses her.

"Okay, cool," she says with an awkward shrug and buries her head back into the R-S Alt-Rock section to hide the blush on her cheeks.

–

It takes Britta a week of refining and re-ordering tracks. She's thinking: Pavement, Smashing Pumpkins and Beck. She finds herself lamenting the fact that Radiohead don't really have any straight-up love songs – and then she wonders why this bothers her. She wants to say that it's because the thought of Disney princess Annie listening to _Fake Plastic Trees _makes her heart break a little, but that's not why and by the time she picks out the final track, she thinks she knows it now.

When she presents Annie with the disc, complete with meticulously-penned track-listing, she blurts about a hundred disclaimers whilst handing it over.

"I tried to think of things you might like, but it's all stuff that is probably way before your time, and you might not actually be into any of it." Britta says, and – _god_ – when did she regress into being a teenager? "In fact, please don't feel like you have to even listen to it."

Annie nods patiently, and carefully slides the CD into her backpack.

"This is important to you, isn't it?" Annie says – a statement, really, more than question. Britta tries to shrug it off.

"I guess," she says, blushing – _again? seriously? _ – and then, after a pause: "It's just that this is totally something I used to do at the start of relationships, so it feels kind of…"

Annie quirks an eyebrow at this. "Kind of what?"

"I don't know… like dating or something…" Britta says at last, and she's pretty sure all of those past high school relationships that started this way were actually ten times less awkward than this conversation right now.

"Well, I think it's really sweet of you," Annie says. "And I'm definitely going to listen to it."

When Annie draws Britta into a hug, and holds her tightly for perhaps longer than usual, Britta feels better. And when Annie presses a kiss to her cheek, Britta hears all of those songs at once, and hears nothing at all, and doesn't know what to say.

–

It starts like this: a forced-casual text from Britta at 9am on a Saturday, knowing Annie will reply. A nervous silence between 9.30am and 10am – Britta waits for Annie to pick her up, and thinks of all the ways in which she needs to be less awkward, more cool about this, thinks of all the reasons why she could never date Annie. A phone call from Annie: _I'm outside! Come down!_

It starts when Britta gets into the passenger seat beside Annie, and hears the last track on her mix CD playing. And Annie has this look on her face like she's decided something.

"I like this one the most," Annie says, and flicks the song back to the start for Britta.

Britta grins. "Wilco," she says. "I hoped you'd like it."

It starts then – Annie says, "Would dating be such a bad thing?" And she says it so calmly, so directly, and that one question holds all of the beautiful simplicity Britta had wanted to express in all her rambled sentences, that she laughs.

"Oh Annie," Britta says, and she feels a buzz of warmth, and joy, and relief, and affection. And Annie is still that embodiment of sunshine and freedom, only she's got all these other things tied up in her that Britta is still finding out – like how she can distill this big, overwhelming thing down into one, simple question.

So when Britta kisses her, then, it's kind of like the start of a high school relationship: two nervous hearts racing in a car parked across the road from Britta's house on a Saturday morning. Britta can feel Annie smiling against her lips as Wilco's singing,

_With a breeze blown through,  
__My head upon your knee  
__Half of it's you; half is me.  
__Half of it's you; half is me._

And Britta feels good this morning.

–


End file.
